Jan. 6 Pipe Bomber Finally Arrested Half Decade Later

The FBI sucks at its job but wants you to salute them anyway

Surveillance footage of the January 6 pipe bomber

The FBI is taking a victory lap for its arrest this morning of a suspect in the January 6 planting of pipe bombs at DNC and RNC headquarters in DC nearly five years ago. Here’s the kicker: there was evidently no breakthrough in the investigation. In fact, the FBI reportedly had the evidence in its possession all along.

“The FBI’s case against the suspect is not based on a new breakthrough, according to two sources, but instead on a review the FBI conducted in recent weeks of evidence that had already been gathered and which the department had in its possession,” MS NOW (previously MSNBC) reported this morning.

“That voluminous trove of material was largely collected in 2021 and 2022.”

In other words, the FBI had all the evidence it needed from the start but never bothered to go through it until now. That’s the kind of failure that should lead to calls for resignations and investigations; but the major media are instead anointing the government agency as if it should be awarded a Nobel.

That’s not the FBI I know. The FBI I know undertook the COINTELPRO program from the 1950s through the Vietnam war that purported to target “radical” and “subversive” individuals and groups. The FBI I know targeted Martin Luther King Jr. and kept of dossiers on Americans from Albert Einstein to Marilyn Monroe. The FBI I know was so biased that their inattention to the Watergate scandals forced “deep throat” to go to the news media, a man who turned out to be a deputy director of the very agency. The FBI I know bungled high-profile investigations from the Anthrax attacks in 2001, the Centennial Olympic Park Bombing in 1996, the Parkland School Shooting in 2018 and its infamous mole, Special Agent Robert Hanssen. The FBI I know was responsible for Ruby Ridge and Waco. The FBI I know through its laboratory provided flawed, biased, and even intentionally false testimony.

I think of the multiple failures around 9/11 (which included, significantly, the same failure to make use of information already in their possession). I think of the targeting of Muslim Americans after 9/11, their harassment and criminalization of Black Lives Matter, the use of “backdoor” collections on Americans by using the PATRIOT Act or Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to circumvent proper warrants, and the false testimony FBI agents used under FISA that where they lied about the existence of “probable cause.” On January 6 itself, I think about the FBI’s failure to heed the Norfolk threat report and other intelligence (including from their own confidential human sources) to warn of potential violence. The Department of Justice’s own IG dinged the FBI for failing to take the “basic step” of canvassing its field offices for intelligence from its sources ahead of Capitol attacks.

This morning, MS NOW’s TV program asked its national security and intelligence analyst Christopher O’Leary (who happens to be a former FBI senior executive) to break down the significance of the alleged pipe bomber arrest. His response was a more scathing depiction of the arrogance of the national security world than anything I’ve ever written.

“I know critics will look at the FBI and point to the fact that this took nearly five years; but you can also look at it — the FBI did not give up,” O’Leary replied. “The FBI is always going to get their man or woman.”

As if that wasn’t ballsy enough, O’Leary goes on to draw a comparison to the FBI’s long investigation into a Libyan man indicted for involvement in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, Abu Anas al-Libi, saying he was arrested almost two decades later. (“Wow, that’s gotta feel good,” the host cooed.) The idea that an investigation into a Libyan jihadi working for a covert network in Afghanistan is anything like a search for an American suspect living in a suburb less than an hour away from the crime is not just laughable. It’s a tell that they think you’re stupid.

The exchange really needs to be read in its entirety, so I’ve produced a transcript below (link to video here):

ALEX WITT [HOST]: Chris, your reaction to Carol’s reporting that the suspect could have been arrested years ago if all the dots had been put together …

CHRISTOPHER O’LEARY: Well, I think it’s important you have to look at an investigation. The FBI is never going to move on trying to approach somebody or charge somebody until they have something that is going to likely move all the way towards a successful prosecution. And that’s done in partnership with the Assistant U.S. Attorneys, in this case … at the Eastern District of Virginia. So while they had identified this individual as somebody of interest, they were also looking at plenty of other subjects. And I know critics will look at the FBI and point to the fact that this took nearly five years. But you can also look at it the FBI did not give up. The FBI is always going to get their man or woman. You know, there was a case that I worked on, Abu Anas al-Libi, who was involved in the 1998 east Africa embassy bombings. Almost two decades later, we got him in Libya.

WITT: Wow. That’s gotta feel good — that much time.

O’LEARY: So the FBI does not give up.

There’s plenty of reasons to believe the FBI did give up on this case until the Trump administration, which has been obsessed with somehow proving that the alleged bomber (and other Capitol attackers) were members of Antifa.

The same MS Now segment plays a clip of Dan Bongino’s podcast from 2024 (before the Deputy FBI Director role he’s serving in today).

Bongino asserts: “There is a massive cover-up because the person who planted those pipe bombs they don’t want you to know who it was because it’s … a connected anti-Trump inside job.”

Witt, the MS Now host, hand wrings about the possibility that the arrest will feed this conspiracy theory. But a major driver of conspiracy theories like these is the FBI itself, which to do their jobs, fails to be transparent about it, and then demands congratulations and that no questions be asked. And that’s exactly how O’Leary, the former FBI executive, responds. Zero acknowledgement that maybe things could’ve been handled better, no introspection. Just the national security mantra of “respect us” for we can do no wrong.

O’Leary replies: “I think what this does is actually exonerates FBI agents and analysts who continue to conduct their investigation in a professional, unbiased manner, which is what the FBI does.”

Exonerates! Just incredible.

I cannot think of a clearer articulation of the national security mindset: shut up and salute.

— Edited by William M. Arkin